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What It Means To Be An Ally To Women In The Military

12/29/2017 01:10 AM EST

The onus is on us – the young men of the officer and enlisted corps – to come together and say, “Enough.” [From Task & Purpose]

At least five of 50 Vietnam War combat veterans who participated in a Veterans Affairs study have tested positive for a waterborne parasite that’s rare beyond Asia, hides unseen in the body for decades and can cause a deadly form of liver cancer, according to interviews and documentation provided by participants in the study.

The survey was conducted last spring at the VA Medical Center at Northport.

Four of the survey participants — the fifth has since died — said they know of nine others who have tested positive for the parasite. If confirmed, that would bring to 14, or more than one in four, the number of study participants shown to have harbored the parasite, known as liver fluke.

The four men, who each shared with Newsday a VA letter confirming their positive result, say they want Northport to release the survey immediately and to encourage all who served in Vietnam to be tested as a precaution.

The fifth Vietnam veteran known to have tested positive, Jim Delgiorno, died Oct. 3 of cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer associated with the parasite, according to his wife, Elizabeth. And Gerald “Jerry” Chiano, a Valley Stream Vietnam vet who was not part of the study because he was already known to have harbored liver fluke, died Sunday of the same disease.

“We thought that by taking the test, we would be raising awareness and saving the lives of others,” said Port Jefferson Station resident Gerald Wiggins, 69, who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, and who tested positive for one species of the fluke. “We never thought we would be fighting for our own lives.”

A spokesman for Northport said the VA has not urged all Vietnam veterans to be tested because “no definitive link has been made between the parasite and liver cancer.” He said the study’s results will not be released until they have been peer-reviewed and published by a medical journal.

Proposed Cuts to Individual Unemployability a Non-Starter,

Administration Acknowledges

(Washington, D.C.)--“It was a bad idea to begin with, unworkable and essentially uncaring for almost a quarter

of a million veterans over the age of 62,” said John Rowan, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America, referring to a provision in the President’s $186.5 billion budget proposal for FY18 that would take thousands of

dollars in Individual Unemployability (IU) benefits from the most vulnerable of veterans. “Now the administration has seen the light and retreated from their poorly-reasoned plan.”

“Here at VVA, we have been deluged by calls from our members,” Rowan said. “They are concerned. They are

scared. Some are angry. They fear a personal financial disaster that could cost them their house, their savings,

their very life.”

“The administration’s plan was, in effect, to take from Peter to pay for Paul, to eviscerate the IU program to make available funds to enhance and expand the so-called Choice program, to the tune of $3.2 billion in FY’18,” noted Rowan.

“Just as an avalanche of calls and e-mails struck all through the VSO and MSO community, so too did VVA and our fellow organizations send letters and offer firm and focused testimony blasting the proposal at a Senate

hearing,” Rowan said.

“Once the politically astute in the administration recognized the folly of cutting benefits, which could cost

certain veterans almost $20,000 a year, they reversed field, acknowledging that theirs was a non-starter, and

that Congress wasn’t going to go along with the proposal,” Rowan concluded.

Vietnam Veterans of America is the nation’s only congressionally chartered veterans’ service organization

dedicated to the needs of Vietnam-era veterans and their families. VVA’s founding principle is:

“Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.”

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